Clients first doesn’t mean you second

Putting your clients ahead of yourself isn’t service. It’s slavery. Good service is one thing. A gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach telling you you’re selling a bit too much of your soul is another. And somewhere along the way, you either draw a line in the sand or you let the tide wash you away.

WHAT’S A STAKE

Me? I’ve spent the better part of my days being a doormat. Somehow, I had it in my head that there were the pictures I was supposed to take and the ones I wasn’t. That ‘yes’ was a mandate, that giving was the only way to get, and that meeting half way wasn’t losing the other half.

We may exist in a service industry. It might be more competitive than ever. And clients deserve to be treated right. But it ain’t opportunity if it kills you slowly.

We know it when things aren’t settling right. I know of no one who gets into a business to let it rule their life. I know of no one who loves photography whose goal is to renounce their vision. I have never met a person who felt they didn’t deserve to get paid the $500 they thought they had to give up to get the contract they got. But these things are all too common. In the absence of alternatives, the rule of thumb seems to be to do what we need to do for the sale.

But if it’s true what they say – that it’s not the photography we sell, but us – then what do we really lose when we don’t get back as much as we give?

DOING FOR OTHERS AND DOING FOR YOU ARE NOT EXCLUSIVE

Not too long ago, I saw Perks of Being a Wallflower. I’m eternally a sucker for a coming of age story. Tell me a tale of a teen trying to find a place in the world, and I’ll be the first to sign up. Because what any teenager knows and every adult has forgotten is this: though our potential is limitless, our will is limited. Our hearts are fragile things. At stake is more than career or cash. At stake is who we are.

And there are two things Perks of Being Wallflower will tell you about who we are. First, we get the love we think we deserve. And second, putting everyone’s life ahead of our own is not love.

Which is all to say that doing a good job isn’t going to be measured by how big a doormat you can be. It will be measured by how much value you make people see in the work you create. That’s worth repeating. Business is built on nothing but the ability to let people see your value. And insofar as business goes, everything else is just a device to move us towards that end. Some people do it by networking, some by brand, some by image. Most by a little bit of all of them. But whatever the device, it is fully possible to create boundaries without losing your clients. In fact, if you do it right, you’ll get even more. A business must reflect the owners needs. Lying down and rolling over isn’t running a business. It’s just running.

The problem is there’s no manual given at birth to tell us how to manage our businesses. There’s no playbook on finding your voice, there’s no key to outline all the right moves. We are thrust into this industry, and we throw ourselves at the problems with all the resolve we can muster. But we can only learn ourselves how to find our footing and make it out unscathed. Business is trial by fire.

BEING HONEST MATTERS

Like love, you get the clients you think you deserve. But for all the bravado and all the talk, most of us will cave to market pressures and financial needs. These are things that will tell you that you don’t deserve much. Don’t listen. If you want a healthy relationship to your business, then know that you deserve as much as you allow yourself to believe. But that doesn’t come easy.

Because to say you deserve more is to be willing to fail and to hurt. If you’re afraid to fall, you’ll never learn to get up. And life is about the getting up, if anything at all. You can’t run. You can’t hide. You can’t duck and cover in the face of doubt, fear, and insecurity. You cannot do these things, because you have to know when you fail, how you fail, and why you fail. Honesty is a part of growth.

Sweeping problems under the rug to preserve the ego is the surest way to let them fester. Instead of creating solutions, you build protective scar tissue that desensitizes you to the subtleties of reality, leading to a corrosive cycle of avoidance that creates more questions than answers. Over time, it becomes all too easy to find yourself spending ten hours doing one thing to avoid one doing another. When it calls for the one, just do the one.

George Carlin said “Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body.” The same applies here. You will not solve business problems through images alone. You will not solve photographic problems through business alone. And there are any number of permutations in between. Lead with strength, but don’t run from weakness. Walk through the fire. Find the solution.

When you get that gnawing feeling that this wasn’t right or that isn’t working, don’t think tomorrow is another day. Get it done now. That’s you telling yourself to make it right. Do not give yourself the space to retreat and let missteps ripple through your life. Commit. Because believing you deserve more isn’t just a hope. And it’s not a betrayal by the world at large. It’s you being ready to get it done. Deserving more is a call to action, and to hear it, you just have to be ready to listen.